Founder and marketing · Founders' Marketing Compass
Why CMOs only last about 18 months at a startup
You hired a CMO eighteen months ago, the launch dates keep slipping, and the board update now carries a marketing line nobody enjoys reading. Most founders spend a year not saying the hire is failing, and by the time they do, the next search is already late.
Co-founded Fixel and ran it as CEO; Logiq acquired it in 2020. Head of specialization at Ono Academic College.
Drawing on a conversation I had with Paul Knegten, former CMO at Beeswax and Outbrain, on Founders' Marketing Compass.
Why do CMOs only last about 18 months?
A CMO's eighteen-month tenure is usually a CEO problem before it is a CMO problem. Paul Knegten, former CMO at Beeswax and Outbrain, puts at least half of it on the CEO, who doubts the hire quietly and waits to let them go instead of saying so. Name what good looks like at the start, and say out loud, early, when you think it isn't.
Answered by Etgar Shpivak, who advises seed and Series A founders on marketing.
The startup CMO who lasts only eighteen months is usually looking at the CEO more than the marketer. I work mostly with founders at the stage where they're still deciding whether marketing has started to bite.
The pattern is always the same. Founders quietly decide the hire has failed, then never say it to the one person who could still turn it around.
The eighteen-month figure gets repeated like a law of nature, as if a short run were just something CMOs do. It is quoted far more often than it is measured. The tenure that is counted every year is at large public companies, where Spencer Stuart puts the average CMO in the S&P 500 at 4.1 years, against 5.0 for the C-suite as a whole. Founders reach for the eighteen months to explain a hire that ended, and it lets everyone call the ending a matter of temperament, not a decision.
The CMO who kept his job was kept by trust, not a number he could show
Paul Knegten, former CMO at Beeswax and Outbrain, told me about a friend. The friend has run marketing at a mid-size public company for years and never looks at risk.
The company had swallowed three other firms and their tangled systems. Nobody could reliably say who owned a given lead.
Knegten asked him the plain question. With no clean way to prove any of it, how do you keep your job?
His friend's answer was "it's because my CEO is a sales guy, he believes in this stuff, he knows this stuff works." I take that seriously. What keeps that marketer employed is the CEO's belief. Belief doesn't fit in a board deck or a chart.
A short tenure starts where nobody agreed what good would look like
Most founders grade a marketing hire against a standard they never wrote down. I watch that standard drift as the mood in the room drifts.
Knegten's bottom line, after years of it, matched what I watch happen. To earn a good tenure, in his words, "you really have to make sure you're on the same page with your CEO and your board about what good looks like."
When that shared picture is missing, every result gets graded against a target the CMO can't see.
One board pushed a ratio that didn't fit enterprise
He watched one board do that damage in person. An investor had backed what they took for a subscription software company.
The investor wanted a clean ratio of a customer's worth against what they cost to win. But Beeswax sold enterprise deals where one contract could make the year. The ratio meant almost nothing, and Knegten told his CEO as much.
Some of what founders call a marketing failure has nothing to do with marketing, and is really just a product the customer was never going to want.
The doubt goes to the co-founder long before it reaches the CMO
When founders start to doubt the hire, the person I watch them raise it with is the co-founder, not the CMO.
Knegten put the failure squarely there. "If you don't think it's working," he said, "you need to say you don't think it's working." In my experience the doubt just sits, and the founder waits for a convenient moment. One day the CMO is gone and calls it a shock.
Knegten's read only holds once there's a real CMO in the seat. At seed or A-round he wouldn't hire one at all. So the earliest failure there is a mistimed title, and I still put it on the CEO. Who to bring in instead of a CMO depends on what is missing; I have set out when an advisor, a fractional CMO or an agency is the right call and when each is not.
What the CEO should say instead of deciding quietly
What I'd want from the CEO instead is the reasoning spoken plainly. Here is how I see it, here is why I asked, here is where your answer and my read part ways.
Saying it that way is harder than a quiet decision. Skip it and you get one more reason marketing leaders walk out of the startups they could have grown.
Saying it early turns a firing into a conversation the marketer can act on
A founder who named the standard up front, and spoke his doubt the first time he felt it, might still part ways with the CMO. The difference is that both of them saw it coming.
The marketer got a fair run, and the eighteen-month number stops describing this hire. What ended the tenure early was a silence that was always the CEO's to break.
What to do about it
Say it isn't working, out loud and early
You have to hear that part of the answer is about your own decisions and expectations, in a conversation most founders would rather delay for another quarter.
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The move
A short CMO tenure is usually the CEO's to prevent.
18
months: the CMO-tenure cliche this targets
Paul Knegten
Former CMO at Beeswax and Outbrain
How to do it
- 01 Agree what good looks like Set it with the CMO and the board, in writing.
- 02 Say the doubt to the person Tell the CMO directly. Skip the quiet co-founder chat.
- 03 Give the reasoning, not a quiz Say how you see it, so the answer has somewhere to land.
Founders' Marketing Compass · episode 14 · Interviewed by Etgar Shpivak · shpivak.co.il
Where this comes from
Paul Knegten started out in digital advertising at the Israeli startup Dapper, which Yahoo acquired, and then ran marketing as VP at MediaMath. He co-founded Amitree, a business-software company selling to real estate agents, which raised over twenty million dollars from Accel Partners and others and was sold in 2024. In 2020 he became CMO of Beeswax, a platform companies used to buy their own digital ad inventory, which Comcast acquired and folded into FreeWheel, and he later became CMO of Outbrain. He has sat on both sides of the CEO-CMO relationship, as the marketing leader answering to a board and as the founder doing the hiring.
Read the full transcript of this conversation
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Founders' Marketing Compass episode 14. Also on Substack, this episode and YouTube.
Questions and answers
The question this page answers
When should a startup hire a CMO?
Hire a CMO once company decisions happen in an executive team and marketing needs a voice in that room. Paul Knegten, speaking on Founders' Marketing Compass, said a seed or A-round startup has no reason for a C-level marketer unless one of the founders is filling the role, because a VP of marketing gets no seat at the table and the company keeps making choices a senior marketer would have flagged early.
Should a seed startup hire advisers instead of a full CMO?
At seed, hire one scrappy generalist and put an experienced adviser above them, rather than paying for a full C-level marketer. Speaking to Etgar Shpivak, Knegten made the case that a senior CMO with exits has little left to prove to you, while an adviser on the board can mentor a hungry junior every week and hand over the strategic read without the cost or the seat a full CMO takes.
Is a short CMO tenure the CMO's fault or the CEO's?
Paul Knegten puts at least half of it on the CEO, and Etgar Shpivak agrees. Without the resources they need, Knegten says, a marketing leader fails, and without honest feedback they fail in the CEO's eyes at least. A founder who never says out loud that he doubts the hire, and never agrees what good looks like, has settled the outcome long before the eighteen-month mark arrives.
Should an early-stage startup hire a PR firm?
A PR firm, the agency you pay to get press, rarely makes sense for a company at the early stage. Knegten made the point in conversation with Etgar Shpivak that it is expensive and you seldom have enough to say yet to justify it. The founder should be building relationships with reporters himself, becoming a subject-matter expert they keep on their list, since a story worth telling comes from the founder well before an agency manufactures one.
Around it
Is a short marketing-leader tenure a sign of a bad hire?
A short marketing-leader tenure is not on its own proof of a bad hire. A leader can be excellent and still be cut because the company judged them against a standard nobody wrote down. The trap where a startup leans on one hero marketer and then watches them burn out or leave is worked through in why marketing leaders quit the startups they helped build.
What kinds of company problems can marketing fix?
Marketing fixes story problems: how a company talks about itself, where it shows up, how clearly it frames the thing it sells. It cannot fix a product the market does not want. Knegten calls these story problems and problem problems, and confusing them wastes quarters, which is why telling a marketing problem from a product one is worked through in whether the fault is the marketing or the product.
Why should a CEO define what good looks like before hiring a CMO?
Without a shared definition of success, every result gets graded against a target the CMO can't see. Most founders judge the hire against a standard they never wrote down, and it drifts with the mood in the room. Agreeing up front with the CEO and board on what good looks like is what earns a fair run.
Why does doubt about a marketing hire reach the co-founder before the CMO?
Founders raise the doubt with the person they trust, the co-founder, not the hire they doubt. So the doubt just sits while the founder waits for a convenient moment, and one day the CMO is gone and calls it a shock. Knegten's rule is blunt: if you don't think it's working, say you don't think it's working.
Is the eighteen-month tenure really just 'what CMOs do'?
Rarely. The figure gets repeated like a law of nature because it lets everyone call the ending a matter of temperament instead of a decision. A founder who named the standard up front and voiced doubt early can still part ways with the CMO, but both saw it coming, and the eighteen-month number stops describing the hire.
Getting help with this
Should a startup hire a full-time CMO or work with a marketing consultant?
Hire a full-time CMO once you can name the numbers marketing owns and fund a team behind them. Before that, a marketing consultant helps you decide what those numbers are without the cost or the empty senior seat. Etgar Shpivak, a marketing consultant who works with seed and Series A founders, works with teams at that undecided point. His view and Knegten's converge: agree what good looks like before you hire for it. See how Etgar Shpivak works with founders.
Why can a clean LTV-to-CAC ratio be the wrong metric for a CMO?
A clean ratio breaks down when one contract can make the year. An investor graded Beeswax like a subscription business, wanting a tidy ratio of a customer's worth against acquisition cost. But it sold enterprise deals, so the ratio meant almost nothing. Judge a CMO on a number that doesn't fit the sales motion and the tenure is doomed early.
What keeps a marketing leader employed when the numbers can't be attributed to them?
The CEO's belief in the work. Knegten's friend has run marketing at a mid-size public company for years, through acquisitions that made it impossible to say who owned a lead, and stays safe because his CEO came from sales and knows marketing works. That belief fits in no board deck or chart.
Cite as: Etgar Shpivak, "Why CMOs only last about 18 months at a startup", shpivak.co.il, 9 September 2024. https://shpivak.co.il/writing/why-do-cmos-only-last-18-months
Quotes attributed to Paul Knegten (Former CMO, Beeswax) are from their conversation on Founders' Marketing Compass, not Etgar Shpivak's words.